Looking for a game developer

[EvilDragon]

While working on the Pyra, I also need a bit of time off, so I'd like to work on some games.

However, I don't have the time to learn proper coding, so I'd like to concentrate on design, graphics and sound.

Therefore, I'm looking for one or more developers to help out.

Right now, I've got two games on mind...

1. A Picross-like game

I love Picross games and we don't really have one on the Pandora yet.

I've checked the various OpenSource ones out there and found a few ones that compile and work fine on the Pandora, but they're all running in windows with simple GTK or Java graphics and are not optimized on the controls.

I'd like to create a visually appealing one, with the possibility for users to simply add levelpacks.

I'd do the graphics, some background music and would also provide a standard puzzle set (themed).

Ideally, a level set would simply consist of a textfile (which gives the level a name) and corresponding 1bit PNG / BMP / whatever graphics that the system would load up and use.

Should be simple to code, probably not much work for a good developer Anyone up to it?

2. The ultimative Puzzle game

An idea I had long ago (back in the GP2X times...) was that of an ultimative puzzle game in the style of Tetris, PuyoPuyo, Dr. Mario, Lumines, etc.

If we can pull this through, it would be awesome - as it combines the best of all Puzzle Games and mixes it together in various forms so that you could basically create unlimited different games.

Different number of tiles (colors, forms), different behaviour of tiles (fall down, stay together), different way to start a reaction (line mode like Tetris, four-colors mode like Puyo Puyo, blocks mode like Tetris, activator mode like Super Puzzle Fighter, etc.), enable / disable timeline mode like on Lumines, etc.

There are many parameters to change which would create many many different puzzle games.

A bit more complex to code, but shouldn't be too complex.

As a first version, I'd love to get the puzzle game itself running, with some preset puzzle games and let the user create and save his own favourite variations himself.

Later, I'd love to implement a story mode similar to Wind and Water, which allows a walkthrough with a lot of different puzzles as well.

Who would like to work on this?

 

[slaeshjag]

I got about a month with nothing better to do. As long as you can produce a detailed description of gameplay, I could give either a shot.

 

[fantomid]

While working on the Pyra, I also need a bit of time off, so I'd like to work on some games.


However, I don't have the time to learn proper coding, so I'd like to concentrate on design, graphics and sound.


Therefore, I'm looking for one or more developers to help out.


Right now, I've got two games on mind...

1. A Picross-like game


I love Picross games and we don't really have one on the Pandora yet.


I've checked the various OpenSource ones out there and found a few ones that compile and work fine on the Pandora, but they're all running in windows with simple GTK or Java graphics and are not optimized on the controls.


I'd like to create a visually appealing one, with the possibility for users to simply add levelpacks.


I'd do the graphics, some background music and would also provide a standard puzzle set (themed).


Ideally, a level set would simply consist of a textfile (which gives the level a name) and corresponding 1bit PNG / BMP / whatever graphics that the system would load up and use.


Should be simple to code, probably not much work for a good developer Anyone up to it?

2. The ultimative Puzzle game


An idea I had long ago (back in the GP2X times...) was that of an ultimative puzzle game in the style of Tetris, PuyoPuyo, Dr. Mario, Lumines, etc.


If we can pull this through, it would be awesome - as it combines the best of all Puzzle Games and mixes it together in various forms so that you could basically create unlimited different games.


Different number of tiles (colors, forms), different behaviour of tiles (fall down, stay together), different way to start a reaction (line mode like Tetris, four-colors mode like Puyo Puyo, blocks mode like Tetris, activator mode like Super Puzzle Fighter, etc.), enable / disable timeline mode like on Lumines, etc.


There are many parameters to change which would create many many different puzzle games.


A bit more complex to code, but shouldn't be too complex.


As a first version, I'd love to get the puzzle game itself running, with some preset puzzle games and let the user create and save his own favourite variations himself.


Later, I'd love to implement a story mode similar to Wind and Water, which allows a walkthrough with a lot of different puzzles as well.


Who would like to work on this?

People with spare time could help.


Not me.


With less time, reading the code to make it better could help too. :mellow:


At least, two people may work on the code to share the knowledge.


The games have to be platform independent, but Pyra/Pandora optimized.


Sunday opinion.

 

[crow_riot]

sounds interesting, it totally depends on the timeframe if i could help out, because i dont have much free time lately.


i recently was thinking of starting a new project, but the lack of ideas is my main problem.


with a detailled "pflichtenheft" (game design document) it would probably less problematic

 

[ptitSeb]

I can try to help too.

 

[EvilDragon]

Wow, thanks a lot I'll work on the details right away

 

[iprice]

I've done a Picross game already (I did a remake of Super Mario Picross years ago) and puzzle games are my speciality as you know ED.

The Picross game worked OK on Pandora, but to make the image viewable (with the clues), meant that the boxes themselves were pretty small - not too good for touchscreen, which I prefer for this type of game. It's workable with various solutions like scaling and scrolling, but not ideal. Of course using the cursors was ok.

I'm still waiting for your input on the other puzzle game ED...

I'm available to work on both now. And the Picross game is just lacking puzzle really.

 

[crow_riot]

oh well, i didnt think of iprice at first, but i must say he's the man of choice (no offence to the others and me ) doing that kind of game(s).

 

[EvilDragon]

Ah, I thought you didn't have much time lately, iPrice

Having an engine ready for Picross is a very good start

Okay, I'll start with the simple one first, the Picross:

General Features:

• Multiple Player Profiles (so that you and your family can play through all the puzzles), supporting Levelpacks as well
• Save what puzzles you solved (incl. a selection screen where you can replay an already solved puzzle)
• Continue last puzzle where you stopped playing
• Challenge mode (Optional): Solve a puzzle in a given time (losing time for faults you make)
• Levelpacks: Consisting of simple text files and pictures, so everyone can create some. Maybe even create an online server where people can download new packs directly from within the game
• Graphics should probably be done with SVGs, so they scale up on other resolutions (i.e. for the Pyra) as well.

Puzzle Engine:

• Loads the image according to the levelpack and creates the Picross from the file.
• Single-Color or multi-color (up to four colors) for advanced levels
• The engine needs to scale the picross to use as much of the screen as possible (so a 5x5 puzzle should be fullscreen, as should a 15x15 puzzle)
• If not too complicated: Add scrollbars to the levels in case it's so big that the puzzle won't fit on screen without having too tiny squares.
• Controls: DPAD and A / X for filling the square or mark it as empty. Press and hold A / X and move the pad to fill multiple squares
• Controls: Alternatively use the Touchscreen. Click and drag to fill the square, press and hold R or L to mark as empty.
• Easy mode: Automatically strike the numbers the user already finished in that column / row.

I think that's it

 

[iprice]

My time is limited, but is better now than it was last year - work issues are no longer a problem.

Something like you are asking for should be quick and easy, especially since I'm more than halfway done on the Picross game anyway. My Picross game has it's own level editor already, so creating images is simple enough in the app itself. Level packs and profiles are easy to implement. So no worries there. Pretty much everything else you've got on your list is done already (other than multiple colours - I never got on with ColorCross). NDS Picross 3D is my most played game on the Pandora BTW - I've completed it several times over, with 3 stars on each puzzle.

 

[EvilDragon]

Okay, now for the complex puzzle game I had in mind:

1. General features:

• Multiple Player profiles, incl. saving games and highscores for each level
• Different characters to play from
• Two-Player vs. mode (either on one unit with Joypad or via Wifi
• C4A Support
• Have a standard set of Puzzles (i.e. rules like Dr. Mario, Tetris, Puyo Puyo, Puzzle Fighter) included, allow the user to create his own sets of puzzles (so he can create and tweak his favourite game)

2. Overworld:

• A simple Mario-Type overworld with different levels (and secret exits). Each level can optionally trigger a small conversation before and after the level on first play (similar to Wind and Water), depending on the character you play with.
• Possible to gain extra weapons (which can be used to open blocked paths or ingame for hard levels)

3. Puzzle Mechanics:

As mentioned, the puzzle mechanics will be what defines the game - they will be flexible as hell and therefore allow different kinds of games.

The basic kind of game is like Tetris: Blocks fall from above and you can place them on the bottom.

However, what you need to do is totally up to the different values.

I'll try to explain the different options here.

a) Types of blocks

• Tetris-shaped like, Lumines-shaped like (four blocks), Dr. Mario / Puzzle-Fighter / PuyoPuyo-like, Columns-like
• Colors: 1 - 6 different colors (only blocks of the same color will disappear - so with one color, it would be like Tetris)
• Will they fall apart and down (PuyoPuyo like), fall when they're disconnected (Dr.Mario-like) or stay where they are all the time?
• Will the blocks rotate (like in most puzzle games) or simply the colors rotate (like Columns)
• Will every part of a block have the same color or can one block consist of multiple colors?

That's already quite a lot variation we create here - but we can do more:

B) What triggers the disappearance of a blocks?

• Create a line (Tetris-Like) of the same color
• Have 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc. of the same color connected (either in a column or row or randomly, like in PuyoPuyo)

c) When is the disappearance triggered?

• As soon as it happens
• When an activator of the same color is included in that area (i.e. like Puzzle Fighter or Lumines)
• Additionally: As soon as the timeline bar moves over an area that can be triggered (Lumines-like)
   

d) Different Goals to complete a level

• Survive a given time (a countdown is needed then)
• Trigger at least X Blocks (or Lines)
• Make a combo of at least X blocks
• Remove all the existing blocks of a level (need to be marked a bit different than the normal blocks, basically like the Viruses in Dr. Mario). These can either be placed randomly (number needs to be given) or with a set pattern (which makes sense for the story mode)

e) Increasing challenge of a level

• X can either be number of block placed, number of blocks that have been triggered or an amount of time
• Add a new color after X
• Increase falling speed after X
• Decrease timeline speed after X
• Let random blocks fall down after X
• Push a random line of blocks from the bottom after X
• And of course: Any combination of those

f) vs. mode

• Get an extra weapon after you triggered X blocks (the weapon depends on the character)
• Send falling blocks to the enemy, or push up random lines from below when doing combos. The amount and type of blocks falling down (or pushing up from below) depends on the character (i.e. one character sends a lot of blocks, but only with two different colors, while a different one sends only a few blocks but of a lot of different colors)
• It's possible to defend yourself (Puzzle Fighter-Style): If your opponent sends you a lot of blocks and you manage to pull a combo at the same time, the blocks will be substracted.
• Maybe different characters also have different attack / defend values as well (which increases the number of blocks you send or decreases the ones you receive)

I think that's mostly it, I might've missed something though.

We need to think about extra weapons as well.

For the beginning, the game mechanics with different parameters (and without extra weapons, story mode, etc.) would be a good start, I guess.

But coding needs to be clean so that we can add different things on top.

Probably most important to have all the different game mechanics parameters included from the very beginning.

Good idea?

My time is limited, but is better now than it was last year - work issues are no longer a problem.

Something like you are asking for should be quick and easy, especially since I'm more than halfway done on the Picross game anyway. My Picross game has it's own level editor already, so creating images is simple enough in the app itself. Level packs and profiles are easy to implement. So no worries there. Pretty much everything else you've got on your list is done already (other than multiple colours - I never got on with ColorCross). NDS Picross 3D is my most played game on the Pandora BTW - I've completed it several times over, with 3 stars on each puzzle.

Well, colors are no must, just might be a good idea if you want to make level sets with classic gaming sprites

It should also be possible to use a normal PC to create the pictures, as it would increase the productivity here a lot.

If you use standard BMPs or PNGs for the level pics, that would be easiest

 

[Ziz]

I tried once to make a puzzle game... Not again.

However to take away a load of _wb_'s shoulders:

Shall these Pyra-Eye-Candy games be open source as the system itself?

 

[EvilDragon]

It was planned for the Pandora, and of course OpenSource is fine

 

[mcobit]

http://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=untahris


Did you see this already? Seems to be a similar approach like your second game idea.


The author is the one that also made Hyperrogue. He doesn't have a forum account afaik.

 

[EvilDragon]

Yep, but it's a combination of different types of games than I have in mind.

 

[fusion_power]

There can't be enough "classic" puzzle games, cool idea. I personaly would like to see an Super Puzzle Fighter type of game. I know that "Angry Drunken Dwarfes" exists but somehow it performs pretty poorly onto my Pandora, same for some other Puzzle games I tried (mostly PC ports so no wonder). A dedicated and optimized Puzzle Game for the Pandora would be really great.
 

Graphics should probably be done with SVGs, so they scale up on other resolutions (i.e. for the Pyra) as well.

A game done with SVGs? Sounds nice, never thought about that possibility, do games even support this vector format?
 

Yep, but it's a combination of different types of games than I have in mind.

Years ago a former student friend of me coded an crazy Tetris game in  Basic or Turbo Pascal, not sure anymore but it was actualy pretty nice. It had alot of weird features like bombs, bonus items that do crazy stuff like flipping all the set tetrominos upside down etc. This kind of stuff could be included as well into your project.

 

[sewlek]

you can use my mini engine if you want, although its still in its infancy and might be better to use an existing one (LÖVE?)

SVN repo: http://sourceforge.net/p/ipa4/code/HEAD/tree/

forum thread: http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/16377-lua-framework//URL]

the engine uses lua as much as possible for fast developing games or prototypes of games. right now im developing under windows, but i was initially working on the pandora so it shouldnt be difficult to "port it back" (this is something i plan to do at some point myself)

i think in ~2 months the engine would be mature enough to actually make games

 

[_wb_]

The generalized puzzle game sounds interesting to me. In particular, perhaps I could somehow make this as a research prototype, implemented in some fancy programming language that could allow very flexible and expressive executable specifications of the game rules. Perhaps even have a "level editor" which does not just include the level layout, but also the rules of the game.

This would be a somewhat restricted subset of General Game Playing, where you get not only a user-definable game, but also an automated AI out of it that can solve the game, give hints, or have an opponent in two-player games.

Count me in!

 

[iprice]

I'm back home now (at work earlier). Here's a screenie of my old Pandora WIP Picross game.

 

[WizardStan]

You could make a contest out of it. Anyone that wants to enter makes an semi-anonymous submission to a trusted third party who keeps track of them, winner is then selected by EvilDragon (anonymous to avoid any accidental subconscious bias) and gets some kind of prize.

Worst case scenario, you end up with a bunch of different games that are very similar.